california hospitals

CA was aware of problems at hospital doing questionable admissions

Anne Zieger — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:27:07 -0400

Earlier this month, a group of California hospitals made national headlines when the news broke that they'd allegedly been recruiting and admitting homeless patients and giving them questionable treatments. Now, it's come out that the state of California knew four years ago that at least one of the hospitals might be admitting patients unnecessarily, but took no action.

In 2004, after inspections, state health officials concluded that there were a number of serious problems at City of Angels Medical Center, including "questionable medical criteria for admission," poor discharge planning and a lack of attention to psychiatric issues. Reviewers included employees from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and the state Department of Health Services.

Though the officials ordered the hospital to fix the problems it discovered, it apparently never followed up to make sure that the facility complied with their demands. Nothing happened until allegations of patient dumping on the city's skid row triggered an investigation into admission practices at City of Angels and two other facilities, according to research by the Los Angeles Times.

To learn more about the investigation:
- read this Los Angeles Times article

Related Articles:
CA hospitals raided on fraud charges
Exec in CA homeless patient scam denies charges
Hospitals accused of dumping homeless
Los Angeles issues new rule limiting discharges

CA hospitals disclose more than 1000 medical harm cases

Anne Zieger — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:18:33 -0400

California hospitals have made their first official disclosures of never events occurring in their facilities, a step required under a state law enacted in 2006. The disclosures, which cover the period between July 2007 and May 2008, address 28 never events specified in the legislation. The state's hospitals reported a total of 1,002 cases of serious medical harm, including wrong-organ surgeries, administration of incorrect drugs and neglect of serious medical conditions. This is a small percentage when weighed against the 4 million hospital admissions that occur in California each year, but still serious, observers note.

As in other states, California has considered legislation which would bar hospitals from charging patients for care that led to medical harm. Originally, such legislation would have covered all 28 conditions tracked by the state, but at the urging of hospital and physician lobbies, the legislator behind the proposed ban has cut back on what errors would be barred from charges.

To learn more about the error reports:
- read this Los Angeles Times piece

Related Articles:
NY Medicaid will stop paying for 'never events'
By 2008, Medicare won't pay for hospital errors
Businesses say: 'no pay' for major mistakes
PA hospitals won't charge for 'never events'

Los Angeles neighborhood suffers for lack of medical care

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:59:55 -0400

When a hospital serving the poor closes, big ripple effects happen. When Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was shut down because of egregious problems with care it delivered, it may have been the right thing to do, but the move has had serious consequences. For the thousands of South Los Angeles residents who had counted on the county-run King-Harbor, it's been nearly a year of struggling to get care from a shrinking care pool. King-Harbor's was the 15th hospital closure in Los Angeles County since 2000, and about half of those were used to serve the residents of South Los Angeles.

Now, clinics like the St. John's Well Child and Family Center are seeing 70 percent increases over their prior levels. And patients who get taken to area hospitals, like St. Francis Medical Center, may just as easily end up in the area Kaiser hospital when St. Francis is full. Meanwhile, the budget-crunched county health department is moving some indigent patients to private hospitals, many of which are in bad shape financially themselves. "We have an all-out crisis here," says Carol Meyer, director of governmental relations for the Los Angeles County Health Services Department.

To learn more about this situation:
- read this piece from The New York Times

Related Articles:
Many Los Angeles hospitals in financial trouble
CMS terminates King/Harbor contract

CA hospital agrees to $1M patient dumping settlement

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:59:56 -0400

One of several Los Angeles hospitals caught up in a patient-dumping scandal has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it dumped a paraplegic man on the city's Skid Row in a hospital gown and colostomy bag. The facility, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, also agreed to be monitored by a former U.S. attorney for up to five years as part of the settlement, adopt new discharge rules and improve services for homeless patients. This agreement follows a similar settlement reached between Kaiser and the city of Los Angeles last year. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles city attorney says that it continues to investigate more than a dozen hospitals and medical offices accused of similar acts.

To learn more about the settlement:
- read this article from the Los Angeles Times

Related Articles:
LA approves fines for patient dumping
Los Angeles investigates another patient dumping case
LA files more patient dumping cases
LA hospital investigated for patient dumping

Prime Healthcare picks up three Tenet facilities

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:59:55 -0400

A growing but controversial hospital chain has agreed to acquire three Tenet hospitals, expanding its network of facilities that reject all forms of managed care contracts. Hospitals included in the deal include the 151-bed Encino campus of Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, 167-bed Garden Grove Hospital Medical Center and 64-bed Dimas Community Hospital. Prime has closed on the Encino-Tarzana deal, but the other two deals await regulatory approval.

The deals fit Prime's pattern of acquiring financially troubled and underperforming hospitals. For example, the Encino facility lost more than $10 million in fiscal 2007, and the other two facilities' performances were "marginal," according to a Prime statement. Prime's chairman, cardiologist Dr. Prem Reddy, says that he plans to sink capital into the hospitals to help turn them around. If Prime's other deals are any indication, he'll also end up realigning the hospitals' service mix dramatically, in some cases low-profit service lines (such as psychiatric services) that, critics say, are needed in the communities the hospitals serve.

Perhaps the most controversial step Prime has taken with its acquired hospitals has been to cancel all managed contracts. However, as of March of this year, Prime signed a contract with Aetna across its network, which now will include 12 hospitals.

To learn more about the acquisition:
- read this Prime press release

Related Articles:
Hospital resists buyout by maverick Prime Healthcare
California hospital operator boots HMOs
Upstart CA hospital chain buys another facility
State stops acquisition by growing CA hospital chain

Japanese gang figures get liver transplants from UCLA

Fri, 30 May 2008 06:59:56 -0400

A new investigation by a daily newspaper has found that a top Japanese crime figure and three other men affiliated with Japanese organize crime groups received liver transplants from Los Angeles-based UCLA Medical Center, despite the ongoing scarcity of such organs for U.S. patients. The four surgeries were done between 2000 and 2004, a time during which more than 100 patients died awaiting liver transplants in the greater Los Angeles region. The surgeon involved was Dr. Ronald Busuttil, executive chairman of UCLA's surgery department, a world-renowned liver surgeon.

While it's not a crime to learn that U.S. hospitals have provided organ transplants to foreign patients or patients with criminal histories, it's a bit painful to hear for U.S. patients who have been waiting (and dying) on the U.S. organ donor list in a time of great organ scarcity, observers note. The physicians involved, meanwhile, say that they don't make moral judgments on patients and simply address medical need.

What galls some observers further is that the most prominent transplant recipient, gang leader Tadamasa Goto, was otherwise barred from the U.S. because of his criminal history, but got in because he struck a deal to help the FBI with information on U.S. activity by Japanese gangs. When he arrived in 2001, he got his liver, but provided little information to law enforcement, FBI officials say.

To learn more about the medical, legal and ethical issues involved in the transplants:
- read this Los Angeles Times article

Related Articles:
Uninsured patient dies after transplant is denied
Liver transplant program issued rebuke
U of Pittsburgh tries ED donor organ program

CA hospital forced to stop cardiac surgeries due to infections

Thu, 29 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

A Fresno hospital has been forced to stop performing open-heart surgeries while state public health authorities investigate a new surge in post-operative infections.

Last year, the CDC investigated bacterial infections that made at least a dozen patients at Saint Agnes Medical Center sick, and possibly contributed to two deaths. At the time, the CDC noted a surgeon with an abnormally high number of affected patients, but was unable to pinpoint a cause for the infections. Earlier this year, state health investigators found no health violations after inspecting the cardiac surgery unit.

The hospital is still performing emergency heart surgeries, but the California Department of Public Health recommended this weekend that the facility stop performing non-emergency procedures.

To learn more about the infections:
- read this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle

Related Articles:
Bill would make U.S. hospital infection rates public
"Bundles" help cut hospital infection rates
VHA program fights hospital-acquired infections
CT hospitals fight drug-resistant organisms

Doctor sues CA hospital, claiming retaliation for state report

Wed, 28 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

An obstetrician and gynecologist has sued a California hospital, claiming his former bosses there are giving him bad recommendations in retaliation for his filing a complaint about conditions there. Dr. John Brannigan filed a complaint about conditions at Memorial Hospital Los Banos' labor and delivery area with the California Department of Health Services in 2004. When it investigated, the Department found that the hospital's quality of care was deficient. Later, when Brannigan tried to get another job, he was told that Los Banos officials gave him poor recommendations. Now, he's filed a civil case against the hospital and its parent company Sutter Health. Brannigan, meanwhile, is being investigated by the state medical board in a separate case involving gross negligence, repeated negligent acts and incompetence.

To learn more about the case:
- read this San Francisco Examiner piece

Related Articles:
Doctor sues CT after Medicaid fraud allegation
IT staffer fired after data theft, sues hospital
Biotech sues Philadelphia hospital over research
Struggling GA hospital faces physician suit

CA lawmakers push for tougher plastic surgery rules

Tue, 27 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Driven in part by the death of the mother of hip-hop star Kanye West, who was getting liposuction and breast implant surgery, California physicians and lawmakers are pushing to tighten up regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry in the state. Right now, such surgeries are increasingly being done in outpatient clinics, where doctors don't face rigorous reviews. However, as with doctors in other states (such as Florida), California legislators would like to see tougher oversight of doctors performing such procedures.

Legislators are being forced to take such steps despite their already being rules on the books designed to prevent safety problems during outpatient cosmetic surgery. More than 10 years ago, the state passed a law requiring cosmetic surgery centers to be recognized by the state, have resuscitation equipment and have procedures to transfer patients to a hospital. However, critics say the law hasn't been effective.

To learn more about this initiative:
- read this Los Angeles Times piece

CA fines 13 hospitals for placing patients at risk

Thu, 22 May 2008 06:59:56 -0400

The California Department of Public Health has disciplined 13 hospitals for placing patients at risk of serious injury or death, fining each $25,000. The agency, which has issued 39 citations since October, won the right to fine facilities for serious violations of patient safety in 2007. Violations included a case in which a car crash victim died at Los Angeles-based public hospital Harbor-UCLA after nurses failed to monitor the patient's failing neurological condition. In another case, Olive View-UCLA was cited when a resident attempted a surgical procedure, handed the patient to another doctor, and failed to communicate that a patient's small intestine may have been perforated in the process.

To learn more about the citations:
- read this Los Angeles Times article

Related Articles:
RI hospital faces third fine for wrong-side brain surgery
CA fines nine hospitals for putting patients at risk
CA bill would allow hospital fines